As I was growing up my cousins always came to our house for many summers with their parents in an Old Yellow School Bus converted into a camper and they were parked in our driveway for the duration of the time they were there .

We did things that young kids do such as swim and run and play and whatever else we could find to do .

Typical kids ..... Good memories

Last summer my sister in law passed from cancer and my Brother had a celebration of life , no funeral or church service, just a get together in the local hotel where we sat around and had a few drinks and remembered what we remembered .

I sat with my cousin who I spent most of my time with in the summers when we were kids and we talked about whatever

I hadn't seen him in 40 years and it was an eye opener as to how much time had really passed . As we sat there talking I envisioned how his life had gone as he was in reasonable physical shape , didn't smoke , had led a clean life on average with what society considers a normal life ....

A big difference from mine in that he had held down 1 job for most of his life while I have had so many different jobs I can not count them ( I tried once to count them all, and gave up )

I don't have any money so to speak set aside for retirement and he has ( Had ) a pension from where he works

I'm 60 years old , out of shape , have smoked all my life along with many other things from the 60's that I wont mention but leave to your imagination

Last Monday he fell over dead from a heart attack we think

I don't feel bad for him ( maybe his wife ) but I am envious of him

Living the good clean life he gets the prize at the end of the rainbow before me .

If I had known that, that is how it works maybe I would have lived a better life ......

But I doubt it ...............

I've had too much fun and experienced so many more different things

Still isn't fair though .....................

Should have been me, it was my turn, not his

Ill have to tune him in when we get to chat again .........................

I don't get to go to weddings or christenings anymore - it's always funerals these days. Always very, tearfully sad. But after interrment, or when the coffin is withdrawn for cremation, the atmosphere lifts and people begin to behave as if it's no more than relations and old friends getting together again.

Next week there is to be a Celebration of the Life of my sister-in-law who died a week ago today. There will be a ceremony inside a Church but it will not be conventionally religious service. She will be buried in a whicker basket, not the usual wooden coffin. All the family coming together and thinking of her is the important thing.

My sister-in-law, (she is my husband's sister), had her 70th birthday last November. Her daughters gave a birthday party for her. Someone took a photograph of a line of all the siblings and the spouses. The widow of a brother who died in July 2013, 4 months earlier, stood in the line. In the space between her and my husband in the line there is an Orb - which I take to be the brother who died.

Orb between Clive & Dorothy.jpg

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"We went everyday for 6 days to St. Barnabas' Hospice. For the first couple of days, poor Dxxxxxx was in an anxious state of mind. She was worried about her home, money/possessions, etc., getting stolen back at her home. She was very suspicious with the nurses when they tried to give her medication.

Pain can make a person feel very vulnerable, they feel they must guard themselves against ‘attack’ from any quarter. Because she was refusing, because of suspicion, the simple paracetamol, (that’s all she would allow), she was being offered – she was in increasingly severe pain. Her daughters tried to persuade her to try a morphine patch, but she refused. Clive and I went to the cafeteria for a coffee and one of her daughters came to us in tears saying that Dorothy was still refusing pain relief, wouldn’t listen to them, so would I go in and tell her to accept the morphine patch - because the relationship between daughters & mothers is different..... I went to the room & a doctor and a nurse were there beside her bed persuading her, *gently and kindly*, to accept the appropriate analgesic. Two of her daughters were also in the room & were weeping. I went to Dorothy, held her hand and said, ‘Dot, why don’t you just do as you’re told?’. And straight away she said, ‘Yes, alright, I will.’ So, before she could change her mind, the staff put a patch behind her shoulder where she couldn’t pick it off - even if she did change her mind. After that, her pain slowly started to be under control, and then, hours afterwards, she became completely rational and lost the paranoia she had been experiencing. That was a very good time when we could talk! She spoke of 'dreams' she had earlier (she'd already told me of these dreams), when, she says, floating above the ground a man she named as Jesus took her hand and took her through a wooded area & then into lovely open countryside, (which she identified as local countryside down here). After only 1 day though, the patch wasn’t sufficient and she had a day of 3 hourly injections. After that they put her on a ‘syringe driver’ – a pump giving measured doses of morphine – and then she stopped talking, (which she’d been doing a lot of), and dozed a lot of the time. The next morning, she’d ordered grapefruit pieces for breakfast, and her granddaughter spoon fed her and she enjoyed it. She told me that it was a 'treat' and a 'luxury' to be spoon fed! At lunch time I spoon fed her Quorn shepherds pie, (she’s vegetarian), she had quite a lot of it, at her own pace, although it was a tiny portion – and she said she enjoyed it. She asked me to get her a black coffee and some biscuits to dunk – I did, but when I came back, she was sleepy & didn’t touch them – she fell asleep and didn’t wake up again. The next day she was unconscious and her breathing was noisy with a chesty rattling. The nurses gave her something to stop the rattling noise. She died about 3.00 pm in the afternoon when, for the first time in a week, she just happened to be entirely alone, (her girls slept the last several nights in her room/day room – always changing around so that Dorothy would never die alone. Shall miss her. She was a sweetie xxxx
We saw Pat, working at the Reception Area as a volunteer. She’s there one day per week. I feel I would like to do something to help my fellow human and Pat gave me some paperwork on things I could do for the Hospice. When I lived on the Island I did voluntary work for Help The Aged and for Earl Mountbatten’s Hospice in Newport. Apart from donating stuff to the local St. Barnabas charity shop, I haven’t given my time to any charitable thing since December 2003 when I came to live on the mainland. I could be a hospital driver – that’s one thing I could do.

Her funeral is going to be a Humanist ceremony and she will be buried in a whicker basket. She was a darling... We will meet again, and for HER, the lapse of time - months/years, will be as nothing."
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I know she's told some of her 'dreams' to her daughters. If and when it might be appropriate, I might ask the daughters to recollect their memories of what she has told them.

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Thank you for your condolences - they are much appreciated -
Picture of Clive and Dorothy dancing at the joint birthdays of their brother & sister-in-law.

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My condolences to you and your husband.
You know I read in one of the books of Elizabeth Kuebler Ross, that a lot of people slip away in the short time when they are left alone. It seems that they want it this way because the crying family seems to be holding them back.
Greeting Marguy

My condolences to you and your husband.You know I read in one of the books of Elizabeth Kuebler Ross, that a lot of people slip away in the short time when they are left alone. It seems that they want it this way because the crying family seems to be holding them back.Greeting Marguy

I also wish to express my condolences to Garry and CathyK plus husband.

Thank you Marguy for reminding us of one of the pionners into nde investigations= Dr. Elizabeth Kubler Ross RIP.
Dr. Kubler Ross was interviewed by a brazilian tv network in the early 70s on a Sunday tv program called Fantastico.
After her first appearance on brazilian tv show the network started to show weekly interesting episodes from Dr. Ross
work with her terminal patients with amazing accounts. Nde studies had just been born becoming public and known
with Dr. Raymond Moody further on.

After my sister-in-law's unusual funeral, A Celebration of her Life, each of her four children spoke of their Reflections of their mother's life. Her son's words were exceptionally well considered and I asked him to send me a transcript. It just arrived this morning. His first baby arrived in this world about 3 hours after Dorothy departed. I asked him if Dorothy, who said she didn't want to come back again, could have returned as his baby daughter. He thought, 'No', but that they had passed each other.

Here are the words of his Reflections spoken in the Church:

Hi Cathy,

Here is the transcript of the reflections I read at Dorothy's celebration:

Our Mum Dorothy, like purest crystal, inspired us all in different ways... each facet revealing a light relative to our own perspective, each of these reflections, elements of the whole. Like a crystal, her life is light.

My Mum was a great inspiration to me. She had incredible ideas about the nature of reality, fantastic visions which she didn't search for but experienced as they happened. She spoke with me of other worlds... higher dimensional frequencies... places where she saw new colours of light. The experiences she had were themselves part of the life flow, streams within the eternal way, embodiment of that which cannot be told. She did not try, she did not believe... she knew and simply was. In her heart was a child's love for the world.

Her life was an exploration of the soul, a journey within and a journey with those she met along the way.... she always told me she met so many wonderful people! The love that she gave unconditionally is still with us.

She was the most magical person I have ever known, she saw the beauty in everything; the beauty of all beauty!